A glimpse into
Enter Stage Right's mailbag...

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posted December 1996

The society that we live in is (or perhaps more accurately, should be)
based on reason. The proponents of reason have always fought a pitched
battle with the mystics of spirits and muscle, those who would enslave
the mind by superstition or physical force.

Nearly every piece of email I have received has been positive, leading
me to believe that I am either right all of the time, or I am preaching
to the converted. Be that as it may, I recently received three pieces
of email from the same person. All three emails were not positive. These
emails give an insight into what I honestly consider to be evil, pure
and simple. Here are the three pieces of email and some of my thoughts
on how the philosophy behind them, how they are at work in the world today.

All three pieces of email were sent during one visit to Enter Stage Right,
from a person who identified themselves with a fake email address. Since
this person chose not to name themselves, I have decided to name them
Mr. Malefactor, loosely translated it means evil doer in Latin.

Email #1 and 2:

There is a cancer in the crotch of modernity, and it is CAPITALISM! GROWTH!
DEVELOPMENT!!! Meanwhile the world is getting worse.

As Ayn Rand stated many times, humanitys soul has been battled for by the Mystic of the Spirit and the
Mystic of the Muscle. Without going into her philosophy extensively, the Mystic of the Spirit attacked
humanitys mind, attempting to destroy it by denying its primacy and the Mystic of the Muscle used simple
brute strength to destroy the intellect.

The statements that Mr. Malefactor made, "Responsibility, egoistic individualism, its DEATH! It's neurological
damage!" is largely the argument of the mystic of the spirit. The mystic of the spirit has always believed that the
mind is the its greatest enemy. A human with a rational mind is able to see through the efforts of the mystic.
The mystic of the spirits only recourse then it to destroy the faculty of the mind. If have you heard the
statements that "X is unknowable?" or "How am I to know what is right and wrong?" then you have heard the
end result of what a mystic most wants, that you have given up on reason and your mind and left the thinking
to him.

The mystic of the spirit also does not argue from the positive, but rather from death and destruction. So you
use your mind? Thats just neurological damage! Think about that statement the fact that you are capable of
free thought means that you are mentally ill! Look at what Mr. Malefactor attacked: responsibility, the ego,
freedom, and individualism, all the tenets of the rational human being.

The mystic of the spirit is naturally a collectivist as well. If a human being uses reason, they will come to
understand the concept of the individual, one that strikes at the very heart of the mystic. How can you be
controlled if you do not buy into the concept that every person is interchangeable?

Email #3:

That's like Reagan's "Peace through Strength," that's like !&#$@ per cent$ for virginity. That's like
saying cancer is such a relaxing, healing, freeing disease, cause the more cells the better.

Since Mr. Malefactor did not bother to tell me what he was specifically responding
to, I can only assume that he was referring to the essay I wrote as a
response to Paul Gobles "The Warriors of Democracy" that
appeared recently in Slate magazine.

Its interesting that Malefactor would compare freedom to cancer,
since he is essentially arguing from a collectivist viewpoint. Was it
not the various permutations of collectivism that spread like cancer through
the world? As I read the history of this century, practically every genocide
originated with people who described themselves as "left" or
"socialist". It is collectivism that establishes "cells"
in the societies that it wishes to destroy. It is collectivism that believes
that the more cells the better, especially in the numbers of killers,
posing as the champions of justice and freedom.